The republicans couldn't give a rotten dump about climate change. They're too busy making their profits off of fossil fuels and old technology, while failing to recognize that neither will last.

The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.-- Abraham Lincoln

I sometimes wonder if Lincoln was the last republican to actually bother to make constructive use of his gray matter. It's clear to me that no current-day republican want to rise to much of anything, never mind to the challenges of the current day.

What a perfect "LOLpolitician" of the presidential candidate who roundly deserves David Brooks' satire biography:

He was sent to a private school, where he was saddened to find there are people in America who summer where they winter. He developed a lifelong concern for the second homeless, and organized bake sales with proceeds going to the moderately rich.

(Maybe this belongs in a more general politics discussion, but "Greed and Debt:The True Story of Mitt Romneyand Bain Capital" is required reading for how Romney's campaign insistence on the urgency of addressing U.S. "dept" is the rankest hypocrisy: he built his empire by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back, destroying companies, jobs, and communities in the process.)

Never has a hurricane been more aptly, if tragically, named than Sandy,... Sandy is short for Cassandra, the Greek mythological figure who epitomizes tragedy. The gods gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy; depending on which version of the story one prefers, she could either see or smell the future. But with this gift also came a curse: Cassandra’s warnings about future disasters were fated to be ignored. That is the essence of this tragedy: to know that a given course of action will lead to disaster but to pursue it nevertheless.

The question Hurricane Sandy really raises, then, is how long Big Oil will be allowed to hold the government of the United States hostage. How long will Exxon-Mobil’s business plans take precedence over the wellbeing and indeed survival of our children? [emphasis mine]

I've been thinking about where this is going, given fossil fuel carbon lock-in. Business as usual looks to already have locked in an eventual 4° C rise, and oil industry expansion plans would lock us in to 8° C rise by 2020. *sigh* If this is what 0.8° C rise looks like, I can't picture an order of magnitude worse. Somewhere along this future the fossil fuel industry plans for us, we'll routinely get Sandy-sized storms of magnitude 4. The image of a magnitude 4 Superstorm a thousand miles wide as part of the new normal sticks in my brain like an earworm.

I don't know if these petitions do any good, but this one's worth a try. (I had this thought during Katrina, and some of the heavy snowstorms over the past few winters....AND the Midwest drought this summer...):

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From CREDO

Tell the major networks: Report the connection between extreme weather and climate change

Dear Friend,

Hurricane Sandy caused terrible devastation and loss. But it is also a teachable moment in educating the public about the connection between extreme weather and oceans that are warming up due to fossil-fueled climate change.

But too many major media outlets and reporters are still relying on lowest common denominator weather reporting to cover record breaking extreme weather.

Emergency responders and members of the public can now get a birds-eye view of some of the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy.

Through NOAA's National Geodetic Survey website, visitors can view a map of the region and click on an icon to view a thumbnail or high-definition image of a specific area. Images are now available for some of the Northeast's hardest-hit areas, including: Atlantic City, NJ., Seaside Heights, N.J., Ocean City, Md., and parts of Delaware.

Move your mouse back and forth over each image to view the "before and after" comparison. "Before" image captured by Google; "After" image captured by NOAA's National Geodetic Survey.